Among those of undoubted importance are the rational structures
of law and of administration. For modern rational capitalism
has need, not only of the technical means of production, but
of a calculable legal system and of administration in terms of
formal rules. Without it adventurous and speculative trading
capitalism and all sorts of politically determined capitalisms are
possible, but no rational enterprise under individual initiative,
with fixed capital and certainty of calculations. Such a legal system
and such administration have been available for economic
activity in a comparative state of legal and formalistic perfection
only in the Occident. We must hence inquire where that law
came from. Among other circumstances, capitalistic interests
have in turn undoubtedly also helped, but by no means alone
nor even principally, to prepare the way for the predominance in
law and administration of a class of jurists specially trained in
rational law. But these interests did not themselves create that
law. Quite different forces were at work in this development. And
why did not the capitalistic interests do the same in China or
India? Why did not the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the
economic development there enter upon that path of rationalization
which is peculiar to the Occident?

For in all the above cases it is a question of the specific and
peculiar rationalism of Western culture. Now by this term very
different things may be understood, as the following discussion
will repeatedly show. There is, for example, rationalization of
mystical contemplation, that is of an attitude which, viewed
from other departments of life, is specifically irrational, just as
much as there are rationalizations of economic life, of technique,
of scientific research, of military training, of law and administration.
Furthermore, each one of these fields may be rationalized
in terms of very different ultimate values and ends, and what is
rational from one point of view may well be irrational from
another. Hence rationalizations of the most varied character have
existed in various departments of life and in all areas of culture.
To characterize their differences from the view-point of cultural
history it is necessary to know what departments are rationalized,
and in what direction. It is hence our first concern to work
out and to explain genetically the special peculiarity of Occidental
rationalism, and within this field that of the modern
Occidental form. Every such attempt at explanation must, recognizing
the fundamental importance of the economic factor,
above all take account of the economic conditions. But at the
same time the opposite correlation must not be left out of consideration.
For though the development of economic rationalism
is partly dependent on rational technique and law, it is at the
same time determined by the ability and disposition of men to
adopt certain types of practical rational conduct. When these
types have been obstructed by spiritual obstacles, the development
of rational economic conduct has also met serious inner
resistance. The magical and religious forces, and the ethical ideas
of duty based upon them, have in the past always been among
the most important formative influences on conduct. In the
studies collected here we shall be concerned with these forces.

Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings
a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of
that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or
idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has
really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.

Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie
in my hands after it is due, he gives me the interest, or so much
the protestant ethic and the 14 spirit of capitalism
as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable
sum where a man has good and large credit, and
makes good use of it.

Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature.
Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and
so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and
threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The
more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that
the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breedingsow,
destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation.
He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced,
even scores of pounds.

Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another
man's purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to
the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion,
raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of
great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes
more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality
and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed
money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment
shut up your friend's purse for ever.

The most trifling actions that affect a man's credit are to be
regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or
eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months
longer; but if he sees you at a billiard-table, or hears your voice
at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his
money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a
lump.

It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it
makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that
still increases your credit.

Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of
living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have
credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some
time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the
pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect:
you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses
mount up to large sums; and will discern what might have
been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any
great inconvenience.

For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred
pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and
honesty.

He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six
pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred
pounds.

He that wastes idly a groat's worth of his time per day, one
day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred
pounds each day.

He that idly loses five shillings' worth of time; loses five shillings,
and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.

He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all
the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing,
which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount
to a considerable sum of money

p.53

In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more
and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all
spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of
any eud‘monistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is
thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of
view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it
appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is
dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate
purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated
to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material
needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship,
so irrational from a na‹ve point of view, is evidently as
definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all
peoples not under capitalistic influence. At the same time it
expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with certain
religious ideas. If we thus ask, why should "money be made
out of men", Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a
colourless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation
from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into
him again and again in his youth:

"Seest thou a man diligent in
his business? He shall stand before kings" (Prov. xxii. 29).

The
earning of money within the modern economic order is, so long
as it is done legally, the result and the expression of virtue and
proficiency in a calling; and this virtue and proficiency are, as it
is now not difficult to see, the real Alpha and Omega of Franklin's
ethic, as expressed in the passages we have quoted, as well
as in all his works without exception.

And in truth this peculiar idea, so familiar to us to-day, but in
reality so little a matter of course, of one's duty in a calling, is
what is most characteristic of the social ethic of capitalistic culture,
and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. It is an obligation
which the individual is supposed to feel and does feel
towards the content of his professional11 activity, no matter in
what it consists, in particular no matter whether it appears on
the surface as a utilization of his personal powers, or only of his
material possessions (as capital).

p.54

The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which
the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an
individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It
forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market
relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action, The manufacturer
who in the long [p.55] run acts counter to these norms, will just as
inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot
or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a
job.

Thus the capitalism of to-day, which has come to dominate
economic life, educates and selects the economic subjects which
it needs through a process of economic survival of the fittest. But
here one can easily see the limits of the concept of selection as a
means of historical explanation. In order that a manner of life so
well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected
at all, i.e. should come to dominate others, it had to originate
somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of
life common to whole groups of men. This origin is what really
needs explanation. Concerning the doctrine of the more na‹ve
historical materialism, that such ideas originate as a reflection or
superstructure of economic situations, we shall speak more in
detail below. At this point it will suffice for our purpose to call
attention to the fact that without doubt, in the country of Benjamin
Franklin's birth (Massachusetts), the spirit of capitalism
(in the sense we have attached to it) was present before the
capitalistic order. There were complaints of a peculiarly calculating
sort of profit-seeking in New England, as distinguished from
other parts of America, as early as 1632. It is further undoubted
that capitalism remained far less developed in some of the
neighbouring colonies, the later Southern States of the United
States of America, in spite of the fact that these latter were
founded by large capitalists for business motives, while the New
England colonies were founded by preachers and seminary
graduates with the help of small bourgeois, craftsmen and yoemen,
for religious reasons. In this case the causal relation is
certainly the reverse of that suggested by the materialistic
standpoint.

But the origin and history of such ideas is much more complex than the
theorists of the superstructure suppose. The spirit of capitalism, in the
sense in which we are using the term, had to fight its way to supremacy
against a whole world of hostile forces. A state of mind such as that
expressed in the passages we have quoted from Franklin, and which called
forth the applause of a whole people, would both in ancient times and in
the Middle Ages have been proscribed as the lowest sort of avarice and as
an attitude entirely lacking in self-respect.

None of these movements was completely separated
from the others, and even the distinction from the nonascetic
Churches of the
Reformation
is never perfectly clear.

Methodism, which first arose in the middle of the eighteenth
century within the Established Church of England, was not, in
the minds of its founders, intended to form a new Church, but
only a new awakening of the ascetic spirit within the old. Only
in the course of its development, especially in its
extension to
America, did it become separate from the Anglican Church.
Pietism first split off from the Calvinistic movement in
England, and especially in Holland. It remained loosely connected
with orthodoxy, shading off from it by imperceptible
gradations, until at the end of the seventeenth century it was
absorbed into Lutheranism under Spener's leadership. Though
the dogmatic adjustment was not entirely satisfactory, it
remained a movement within the Lutheran Church. Only the
faction dominated by Zinzendorf, and affected by lingering
Hussite and Calvinistic influences within the Moravian brotherhood,
was forced, like Methodism against its will, to form a
peculiar sort of sect. Calvinism and Baptism were at the beginning
of their development sharply opposed to each other. But in
the Baptism of the latter part of the seventeenth century they
were in close contact. And even in the Independent sects of
England and Holland at the beginning of the seventeenth century
the transition was not abrupt. As Pietism shows, the transition
to Lutheranism is also gradual, and the same is true of
Calvinism and the Anglican Church, though both in external
character and in the spirit of its most logical adherents the latter
is more closely related to Catholicism. It is true that both the
mass of the adherents and especially the staunchest champions
of that ascetic movement which, in the broadest sense of a
highly ambiguous word, has been called Puritanism, did attack
the foundations of Anglicanism; but even here the differences
were only gradually worked out in the course of the struggle.
Even if for the present we quite ignore the questions of government
and organization which do not interest us here, the facts
are just the same. The dogmatic differences, even the most
important, such as those over the doctrines of predestination
and justification, were combined in the most complex ways, and
even at the beginning of the seventeenth century regularly,
though not without exception, prevented the maintenance of
unity in the Church. Above all, the types of moral conduct in
which we are interested may be found in a similar manner
among the adherents of the most various denominations,
derived from any one of the four sources mentioned above, or a
combination of several of them. We shall see that similar ethical
maxims may be correlated with very different dogmatic foundations.
Also the important literary tools for the saving of souls,
above all the casuistic compendia of the various denominations,
influenced each other in the course of time; one finds great
similarities in them, in spite of very great differences in actual
conduct.

It would almost seem as though we had best completely
ignore both the dogmatic foundations and the ethical theory and
confine our attention to the moral practice so far as it can be
determined. That, however, is not true. The various different
dogmatic roots of ascetic morality did no doubt die out after
terrible struggles. But the original connection with those
dogmas has left behind important traces in the later undogmatic
ethics; moreover, only the knowledge of the original body of
ideas can help us to understand the connection of that morality
with the idea of the afterlife which absolutely dominated the
most spiritual men of that time. Without its power, overshadowing
everything else, no moral awakening which seriously
influenced practical life came into being in that period.

We are naturally not concerned with the question of what was
theoretically and officially taught in the ethical compendia of the
time, however much practical significance this may have had
through the influence of Church discipline, pastoral work, and
preaching.3 We are interested rather in something entirely different:
the influence of those psychological sanctions which, originating
in religious belief and the practice of religion, gave a
direction to practical conduct and held the individual to it.
Now these sanctions were to a large extent derived from the
peculiarities of the religious ideas behind them. The men of that
day were occupied with abstract dogmas to an extent which
itself can only be understood when we perceive the connection
of these dogmas with practical religious interests. A few
observations on dogma, which will seem to the nontheological
reader as dull as they will hasty and superficial to the
theologian, are indispensable. We can of course only proceed by
presenting these religious ideas in the artificial simplicity of
ideal types, as they could at best but seldom be found in history.
For just because of the impossibility of drawing sharp boundaries
in historical reality we can only hope to understand their
specific importance from an investigation of them in their most
consistent and logical forms.

A. CALVINISM

Now Calvinism was the faith over which the great political
and cultural struggles of the
sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries
were fought in the most highly developed countries, the Netherlands,
England, and France. To it we shall hence turn first. At that
time, and in general even to-day, the doctrine of predestination
was considered its most characteristic dogma. It is true that there
has been controversy as to whether it is the most essential
dogma of the Reformed Church or only an appendage. Judgments
of the importance of a historical phenomenon may be
judgments of value or faith, namely, when they refer to what is
alone interesting, or alone in the long run valuable in it. Or, on
the other hand, they may refer to its influence on other historical
processes as a causal factor. Then we are concerned with judgments
of historical imputation. If now we start, as we must do
here, from the latter standpoint and inquire into the significance
which is to be attributed to that dogma by virtue of its cultural
and historical consequences, it must certainly be rated very
highly. The movement which Oldenbarneveld led was shattered
by it. The schism in the English Church became irrevocable
under
James 1 after the Crown and the Puritans came to differ
dogmatically over just this doctrine. Again and again it was
looked upon as the real element of political danger in Calvinism
and attacked as such by those in authority. The great synods
of the seventeenth century, above all those of Dordrecht and
Westminster,
besides numerous smaller ones, made its elevation to
canonical authority the central purpose of their work. It served
as a rallying-point to countless heroes of the Church militant,
and in both the
eighteenth and the
nineteenth centuries it
caused schisms in the Church and formed the battle-cry of
great new awakenings. We cannot pass it by, and since to-day
it can no longer be assumed as known to all educated men,
we can best learn its content from the authoritative words of
the Westminster Confession of
1647, which in this regard is
simply repeated by both Independent and Baptist creeds.

Chapter IX (of Free Will), No. 3. Man, by his fall into a state
of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good
accompanying salvation. So that a natural man, being
altogether averse from that Good, and dead in sin, is not able,
by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself
thereunto.

Chapter III (of God's Eternal Decree), No. 3. By the decree of
God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels
are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained
to everlasting death.

No. 5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life,
God before the foundation of the world was laid, according to
His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel
and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting
glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any
foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of
them, or any other thing in the creature as conditions or causes
moving Him thereunto, and all to the praise of His glorious
grace.

No. 7. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according
to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He
extendeth, or with-holdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory
of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to
ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise
of His glorious justice.

Chapter X (of Effectual Calling), No. 1. All those whom God
hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased in
His appointed and accepted time effectually to call by His word
and spirit (out of that state of sin and death, in which they are
by nature) . . . taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto
them an heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty
power determining them to that which is good. . . .

Chapter V (of Providence), No. 6. As for those wicked and
ungodly men, whom God as a righteous judge, for former sins
doth blind and harden, from them He not only with-holdeth
His grace, whereby they might have been enlightened in their
understandings and wrought upon in their hearts, but sometimes
also withdraweth the gifts which they had and exposeth
them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin:
and withal, gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations
of the world, and the power of Satan: whereby it comes to pass
that they harden themselves, even under those means, which
God useth for the softening of others.

"Though I may be sent to Hell for it, such a God will never
command my respect"

was Milton's well-known opinion of the
doctrine. But we are here concerned not with the evaluation,
but the historical significance of the dogma. We can only briefly
sketch the question of how the doctrine originated and how it
fitted into the framework of Calvinistic theology.

Two paths leading to it were possible. The phenomenon of the
religious sense of grace is combined, in the most active and
passionate of those great worshippers which Christianity has
produced again and again since Augustine, with the feeling of
certainty that that grace is the sole product of an objective power,
and not in the least to be attributed to personal worth. The
powerful feeling of light-hearted assurance, in which the tremendous
pressure of their sense of sin is released, apparently
breaks over them with elemental force and destroys every possibility
of the belief that this overpowering gift of grace could owe
anything to their own co-operation or could be connected with
achievements or qualities of their own faith and will. At the time
of Luther's greatest religious creativeness, when he was capable
of writing his Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, God's secret decree was
also to him most definitely the sole and ultimate source of his
state of religious grace.11 Even later he did not formally abandon
it. But not only did the idea not assume a central position for
him, but it receded more and more into the background, the
more his position as responsible head of his Church forced him
into practical politics. Melanchthon quite deliberately avoided
adopting the dark and dangerous teaching in the Augsburg Confession,
and for the Church fathers of Lutheranism it was an
article of faith that grace was revocable (amissibilis), and could be
won again by penitent humility and faithful trust in the word of
God and in the sacraments.

Footnote 12: The truth is that both
Luther
and
Calvin
believed
fundamentally
in a double God (see Ritschl's remarks in Geschichte des Pietismus
and Köstlin, Gott in Realenzyklopädie für
protestantische
Theologie und Kirche, third edition), the gracious and kindly
Father of the New Testament, who dominates the first books of
the Institutio Christiana, and behind him the Deus
absconditus as
an arbitrary despot. For Luther, the God of the New Testament
kept the upper hand, because he avoided reflection on metaphysical
questions as useless and dangerous, while for Calvin
the idea of a transcendental God won out. In the popular
development of Calvinism, it is true, this idea could not be
maintained, but what took his place was not the Heavenly
Father of the New Testament but the Jehovah of the Old.

It is not
fully developed until the third edition of his Institutes, and only
gained its position of central prominence after his death in the
great struggles which the Synods of Dordrecht and Westminster
sought to put an end to. With Calvin the decretum horribile is
derived not, as with Luther, from religious experience, but from
the logical necessity of his thought; therefore its importance increases
with every increase in the logical consistency of that religious
thought. The interest of it is solely in God, not in man; God
does not exist for men, but men for the sake of God. All creation,
including of course the fact, as it undoubtedly was for Calvin,
that only a small proportion of men are chosen for eternal
grace, can have any meaning only as means to the glory and
majesty of God. To apply earthly standards of justice to His sovereign
decrees is meaningless and an insult to His Majesty, since
He and He alone is free, i.e. is subject to no law. His decrees can
only be understood by or even known to us in so far as it has been
His pleasure to reveal them. We can only hold to these fragments
of eternal truth. Everything else, including the meaning of our
individual destiny, is hidden in dark mystery which it would be
both impossible to pierce and presumptuous to question.

For the damned to complain of their lot would be much the
same as for animals to bemoan the fact they were not born as
men. For everything of the flesh is separated from God by an
unbridgeable gulf and deserves of Him only eternal death, in so
far as He has not decreed otherwise for the glorification of His
Majesty. We know only that a part of humanity is saved, the rest
damned. To assume that human merit or guilt play a part in
determining this destiny would be to think of God's absolutely
free decrees, which have been settled from eternity, as subject to
change by human influence, an impossible contradiction. The
Father in heaven of the New Testament, so human and understanding,
who rejoices over the repentance of a sinner as a
woman over the lost piece of silver she has found, is gone. His
place has been taken by a transcendental being, beyond the reach
of human understanding, who with His quite incomprehensible
decrees has decided the fate of every individual and regulated the
tiniest details of the cosmos from eternity. God's grace is, since
His decrees cannot change, as impossible for those to whom He
has granted it to lose as it is unattainable for those to whom He
has denied it.

In its extreme inhumanity this doctrine must above all have
had one consequence for the life of a generation which surrendered
to its magnificent consistency. That was a feeling of
unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual.16 In
what was for the man of the age of the Reformation the most
important thing in life, his eternal salvation, he was forced to
follow his path alone to meet a destiny which had been decreed
for him from eternity. No one could help him. No priest, for the
chosen one can understand the word of God only in his own
heart. No sacraments, for though the sacraments had been
ordained by God for the increase of His glory, and must hence
be scrupulously observed, they are not a means to the attainment
of grace, but only the subjective externa subsidia of faith. No
Church, for though it was held that extra ecclesiam nulla salus in the
sense that whoever kept away from the true Church could never
belong to God's chosen band, nevertheless the membership of
the external Church included the doomed. They should belong
to it and be subjected to its discipline, not in order thus to attain
salvation, that is impossible, but because, for the glory of God,
they too must be forced to obey His commandments. Finally,
even no God. For even Christ had died only for the elect, for
whose benefit God had decreed His martyrdom from eternity.
This, the complete elimination of salvation through the Church
and the sacraments (which was in Lutheranism by no
means developed to its final conclusions), was what formed the
absolutely decisive difference from Catholicism.

That great historic process in the development of religions,
the elimination of magic from the world which had begun
with the old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with Hellenistic
scientific thought, had repudiated all magical means to
salvation as superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion.
The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony
at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without
song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects
of magical and sacramental forces on salvation, should creep in.
There was not only no magical means of attaining the grace of
God for those to whom God had decided to deny it, but no
means whatever. Combined with the harsh doctrines of the absolute
transcendentality of God and the corruption of everything
the religious foundations of worldly asceticism 61
pertaining to the flesh, this inner isolation of the individual
contains, on the one hand, the reason for the entirely
negative attitude of Puritanism to all the sensuous and emotional
elements in culture and in religion, because they are of no
use toward salvation and promote sentimental illusions and
idolatrous superstitions. Thus it provides a basis for a fundamental
antagonism to sensuous culture of all kinds. On the
other hand, it forms one of the roots of that disillusioned and
pessimistically inclined individualism which can even to-day
be identified in the national characters and the institutions of
the peoples with a Puritan past, in such a striking contrast to the
quite different spectacles through which the Enlightenment
later looked upon men. We can clearly identify the traces of
the influence of the doctrine of predestination in the elementary
forms of conduct and attitude toward life in the era with which
we are concerned, even where its authority as a dogma was on
the decline. It was in fact only the most extreme form of that
exclusive trust in God in which we are here interested. It comes
out for instance in the strikingly frequent repetition, especially
in the English Puritan literature, of warnings against any trust in
the aid of friendship of men. Even the amiable Baxter counsels
deep distrust of even one's closest friend, and Bailey directly
exhorts to trust no one and to say nothing compromising to
anyone. Only God should be your confidant. In striking contrast
to Lutheranism, this attitude toward life was also connected
with the quiet disappearance of the private confession,
of which Calvin was suspicious only on account of its possible
sacramental misinterpretation, from all the regions of fully
developed Calvinism. That was an occurrence of the greatest
importance. In the first place it is a symptom of the type of
influence this religion exercised. Further, however, it was a psychological
stimulus to the development of their ethical attitude.
The means to a periodical discharge of the emotional sense of
sin was done away with.

p. 181

Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals
in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an
inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history.
To-day the spirit of religious asceticism-whether finally, who knows?-has
escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on
mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer. The rosy blush of its
laughing heir, the Enlightenment, seems also to be irretrievably fading,
and the idea of duty in one's calling prowls about in our lives like the
ghost of dead religious beliefs. Where the fulfilment of the calling cannot
directly be related to the highest spiritual and cultural values, or when,
on the other hand, it need not be felt simply as economic compulsion, the
individual generally abandons the attempt to justify it at all. In the
field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of
wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become
associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the
character of sport.

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or
whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new
prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas
and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished
with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of
this cultural development, it might well be truly said:

"Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity
imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before
achieved."

But this brings us to the world of judgments of value and of
faith, with which this purely historical discussion need not be
burdened. The next task would be rather to show the significance
of ascetic rationalism, which has only been touched in the
foregoing sketch, for the content of practical social ethics, thus
for the types of organization and the functions of social groups
from the conventicle to the State. Then its relations to humanistic
rationalism, its ideals of life and cultural influence; further to
the development of philosophical and scientific empiricism, to
technical development and to spiritual ideals would have to be
analysed. Then its historical development from the medi‘val
beginnings of worldly asceticism to its dissolution into pure
utilitarianism would have to be traced out through all the areas
of ascetic religion. Only then could the quantitative cultural
significance of ascetic Protestantism in its relation to the other
plastic elements of modern culture be estimated.

Here we have only attempted to trace the fact and the direction
of its influence to their motives in one, though a very
important point. But it would also further be necessary to
investigate how Protestant Asceticism was in turn influenced in
its development and its character by the totality of social conditions,
especially economic. The modern man is in general,
even with the best will, unable to give religious ideas a significance
for culture and national character which they deserve. But
it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic
an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of
culture and of history. Each is equally possible, but each, if it
does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an
investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of
historical truth.

That
indeed is right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of
violence, the concept of "state" would be eliminated, and a condition would
emerge that could be designated as
"anarchy" in the specific sense of this
word.

Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the
state - nobody says that - but force is a means specific to the state.

Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force
is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to
which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the
"right" to use violence. Hence, "politics" for us means striving to share
power, either among states or among groups within a state.

1.1.1. Sociology (in the sense in which this highly ambiguous word
is
used
here) is a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social
action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and
effects.

In action is included all human behaviour when and in so far as
the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to it. Action in this
sense may be either overt or purely inward or subjective; it may consist of
positive intervention in a situation, or of deliberately refraining from
such intervention or passively acquiescing in the situation.

Action is social
in so far as, by virtue of the subjective meaning
attached to it by the acting individual (or individuals), it takes account
of the behaviour of others and is thereby orientated in its course.

Parsons' footnote 30: Since the term charisma was, in its
sociological
usage, introduced by Weber himself from a different field, no attempt has
been made to find an English equivalent and it will be used directly
throughout. Weber took it from the corresponding Greek which was used in
the literature of early Christianity and means `the gift of grace'.

1947: p.111
The ideal types of social action which for instance are used in
economic theory are thus `unrealistic' or abstract in that they always ask
what course of action would take place if it were purely rational and
orientated to economic ends alone.

Not every type of contact of human beings has a
social
character;
this is rather confined to cases where the actor's behaviour is
meaningfully orientated to that of others. For example, a mere collision of
two cyclists may be compared to a natural event. On the other
hand, their
attempt to avoid hitting each other, or whatever insults, blows, or
friendly discussion might follow the collision, would constitute `social
action'.

1947: pp 114-115
Sociology, it goes without saying, is by no means confined to the study of
"social action"; this is only, at least for the kind of sociology being
developed here, its central subject [p.115] matter, that which may be said
to be decisive for its status as a science. But this does not imply any
judgement on the comparative importance of this and other factors.

Aron/1967 p.186
Rational action in relation to a
goal
corresponds roughly to Pareto's
logical action. It is the action of the engineer who is building a bridge,
the speculator at the stock exchange who is trying to make money, the
general who wants to win a victory.

Aron/1967 p.187
Rational action in relation
to a value is the action of Lassalle in
allowing himself to be killed in a duel, or of the brave captain who goes
down with his ship. The action is rational, not because it seeks to attain
a definite and external goal, but because to fail to take up the challenge
to a duel, or to abandon the sinking ship, would be regarded as
dishonourable; thus the actor is acting rationally in accepting all the
risks, not to obtain an extrinsic result, but to remain faithful to his own
idea of honour.

Affective action
is dictated immediately by the state of mind or humour of
the subject: the slap the mother gives her child because it has been
unbearably bad; the punch administered during a football game by a player
who has, as we say, lost control of himself. In all these examples, the
action is defined, not with reference to a goal or system of values, but by
the emotional reaction of an actor placed in a given set of circumstances

Traditional action
is action that is dictated by customs, by beliefs become
habitual and second nature, as it were, so that to act according to
tradition the actor need not imagine a goal, or be conscious of a value, or
be stirred to immediate emotion; he simply obeys reflexes that have become
entrenched by conditioning.

Strictly traditional behaviour,
like the reactive type of imitation
discussed above, lies very close to the borderline of what can
justifiably
be called meaningfully orientated action, and indeed often on the other
side. For it is very often a matter of almost automatic reaction to
habitual stimuli which guide behaviour in a course which has been
repeatedly followed. The great bulk of all everyday action to which people
have become habitually accustomed approaches this type. Hence, its place in
a systematic classification is not merely that of a limiting case because,
as will be shown later, attachment to habitual forms can be upheld with
varying degrees of self-consciousness ad in a variety of senses. In this
case the type may shade over into
number two.
(Wertrationalität)

1962: Affectually determined
behaviour is the kind which demands the
immediate satisfaction of an impulse, regardless of how sublime or sordid
it may be, in order to obtain revenge, sensual gratification, complete
surrender to a person or ideal, blissful contemplation, or finally to
release emotional tensions.

Legitimacy may be ascribed to an order by those acting subject to it in the
following ways:-

(a) By tradition; a belief in the legitimacy of what has always
existed;

(b) by virtue of affectual attitudes, especially emotional,
legitimizing
the validity of what is newly revealed or a model to imitate;

(c) by virtue
of a rational belief in its absolute value

(Footnote:
Wertrational),
thus lending it the validity of an absolute and final commitment;

(d) because it has been established in a manner which is recognised
to be
legal. This legality may be treated as legitimate in either of two
ways: on the one hand, it may derive from a voluntary agreement of the
interested parties on the relevant terms. On the other hand, it may be
imposed on the basis of what is held to be a legitimate authority over the
relevant persons and a corresponding claim to their obedience....

1947: p.131
1. The derivation of the legitimacy of an order from a belief in the
sanctity of tradition is the most universal and most primitive case. The
fear of magical penalties confirms the general psychological inhibitions
against any sort of change in customary modes of action. At the same time
the multifarious vested interests which tend to become attached to
upholding conformity with an order, once it has been established, have
worked in the same direction. (footnote: See chapter 3)

2. Conscious departures from tradition in the establishment of a new order
have originally been due almost entirely to prophetic oracles or at least
to pronouncements which have been sanctioned as prophetic. This was true as
late as the statutes of the Greek Aisymnetes. Conformity has then depended
on belief in the legitimacy of the prophet. In times of strict
traditionalism a new order, that is one which was regarded as new,
could, without being revealed in this way, only become legitimised by the
claim that it had actually always been valid though not yet rightly known,
or that it had been obscured for a time and was now being restored in its
rightful place.

3. The type case of legitimacy by virtue of rational belief in an absolute
value is that of `Natural Law'. However limited its actual effect, as
compared with its ideal claims, it cannot be denied that its logically
developed reasoning has had an influence on actual action which is far from
negligible. This mode of influence should be clearly distinguished from
that of revealed law, of one imposed by authority, or of one which is
merely traditional.

4. Today the most usual basis of legitimacy is the belief in legality, the
readiness to conform with rules which are formally correct and have been
imposed by accepted procedure. The distinction between an order derived
from voluntary agreement and one which has been imposed is only relative.
[p.132] For so far as the agreement underlying the order is not unanimous,
as in the past has often been held necessary for complete legitimacy, its
functioning within a social group will be dependent on the willingness of
individuals with deviant wishes to give way to the majority. This is very
frequently the case and actually means that the order is imposed on the
minority. At the same time, it is very common for minorities by force or by
the use of more far-sighted methods, to impose an order which in the course
of time comes to be regarded as legitimate by those who originally resisted
it. In so far as the ballot as a legal means of altering and order, it is
very common for the will of a minority to attain a formal majority and for
the majority to submit. In this case majority rule is a mere illusion. The
belief in the legality of an order as established by voluntary agreement is
relatively ancient and is occasionally found among so-called primitive
peoples; but in these case it is almost always supplemented by the
authority of oracles.

5. So far as it is not derived merely from fear or from motives of
expediency, a willingness to submit to an order imposed by one man or a
small group, always in some sense implies a belief in the legitimate
authority of the source imposing it. (Footnote: This subject will be
dealt with separately below. See 13<< 16<< and Chapter 3 )

6. Submission to an order is almost always determined by a variety of
motives; by a wide variety of interests and by a mixture of adherence to
tradition and belief in legality, unless it is a case of entirely new
regulations. In a very large proportion of cases, the actors subject to the
order are of course not even aware how far it is a matter of custom, of
convention, or of law. In such cases the sociologist must attempt to
formulate the typical basis of validity.

A social relationship will be called
`communal' if and so far as
orientation of social action - whether in the individual case, on the
average, or in the pure type - is based on a subjective feeling of the
parties, whether affectual or traditional, that they belong together. A
social relationship will, on the other hand, be called
`associative'
if and
in so far as the orientation of social action within it rests on a
rationally motivated adjustment of interests or a similarly motivated
agreement, whether the basis of rational judgement be absolute values or
reasons of expediency

1947: p.137
Communal relationships may rest on various types of affectual, emotional or
traditional bases. Examples are a religious brotherhood, an erotic
relationship, a relation of personal loyalty, a national community, the
esprit de corps of a military unit. The type case is most
conveniently illustrated by the family.

"Power, authority, and imperative control" is Talcot Parson's translation
of a heading "Macht und Herrschaft". In fact, Parsons translated Weber's
term Herrschaft with three
different terms: authority, imperative control and
imperative co-ordination.
Antonia Schier suggests these translations

1947: `Power'
(Macht)
is the probability that one actor within a
social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite
resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests.

1962: By power is meant that
opportunity existing within a social
relationship which permits one to carry out one's own will even against
resistance and regardless of the basis on which this opportunity rests

1947: `Imperative control'
(Herrschaft) is the probability that a command with a
given specific
content will be obeyed by a given group of persons. 'Discipline' is the
probability that by virtue of habituation a command will receive prompt and
automatic obedience in stereotyped forms, on the part of a given group of
persons.

1962: By domination is meant
the opportunity to have a command of a
specified content obeyed by a given group of persons. By `discipline' will
be meant the opportunity to obtain prompt, and automatic obedience in a
predictable form from a given group of persons because of their practical
orientation toward a command.

1947 p.153: 1. The
concept of power is highly comprehensive from the point of view of
sociology.All conceivable qualities of a person and all conceivable
combinations of circumstances may put him in a position to impose his will
in a given situation. The sociological concept of imperative control must
hence be more precise and can only mean the probability that the
command will be obeyed.

1962 p.117: 1. The concept of
power is sociologically amorphous. Every conceivable
quality of a person and every combination of
circumstances may put someone in a situation where he can demand compliance
with his will. The sociological concept of domination consequently must be
more precise and can only mean the probability that a command will
be obeyed.

1947 p.153: 2. The concept of
'discipline' includes the 'habituation' characteristic of uncritical and
unresisting mass obedience.

1. The head of a household exercises authority without an administrative
staff. A Beduin chief, who levies contributions from the caravans, persons,
and shipments of goods which pass his stronghold, exercises imperative
control over the total group of changing and indeterminate individuals who,
though they are not members of any corporate group as such, have gotten
themselves into a particular common situation.

If it possess an administrative staff, a corporate group is always, by
virtue of this fact, to some degree imperatively co-ordinated. ... The
usual imperatively co-ordinated group is at the same time an administrative
organization. The character of the corporate group is is determined by a
variety of factors: the mode in which the administration is carried out,
the character of the personnel, the objects over which it exercises
control, and the extent of effective jurisdiction of its authority. The
first two factors in particular are dependent in the highest degree on the
way in which the authority is legitimized.

An imperatively coordinated corporate group will be called
`political'
if
and in so far as the enforcement of its order is carried out continually
within a given territorial area by the application and threat of physical
force on the part of the administrative staff. A compulsory political
association with continuous organisation (politischer
Anstaltsbetrieb) will be called a `state' if and in so far as its
administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of
the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its
order. A system of social action, especially that of a corporate group,
will be spoken of as `politically oriented' if and in so far as it aims at
exerting influence on the directing authorities of a corporate political
group; especially at the appropriation, expropriation, redistribution or
allocation of the powers of government.

An imperatively coordinated corporate group will be called a
`hierocratic'
group (hierokratischer Verband) if and in so far as for the
enforcement of
its order it employs `psychic' coercion through the distribution or denial
of religious benefits ('hierocratic coercion'). A compulsory hierocratic
association with continuous organisation will be called a `church' if and
in so far as its administrative staff claims a monopoly of the legitimate
use of hierocratic coercion.

Chapter 3 The types of authority and imperative coordination1 The basis of legitimacysection 1.
1947: p.328

section 2. The Three Pure Types of Legitimate Authority

There are three pure types of legitimate authority. The validity of their
claims to legitimacy may be based on:

1. Rational grounds - resting in a belief in the `legality' of
patterns of
normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such
rules to issue commands (legal authority)

2. Traditional grounds - resting on an established belief in the
sanctity of
immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of the status of those exercising
authority under them (traditional authority); or finally,

3. Charismatic grounds - resting on devotion to the specific and
exceptional
sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of
the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him (charismatic
authority).

...
The usefulness of the above classification can only be judged by its
results in promoting systematic analysis. The concept of `charisma' (`the
gift of grace') is taken from the vocabulary of early Christianity. For the
Christian religious organisation Rudolph Sohm, in his Kirchenrecht,
was the first to clarify the substance of the concept, even though he did
not use the same terminology. Others (for instance, Hollin, Enthusiasmus
und Bussgewalt) have clarified certain important consequences of it. It
is thus nothing new.

The term `charisma' will be applied to a certain quality of an individual
personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and
treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically
exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible
[p.359] to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as
exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as
a leader. [Frank's reference p.30 is to Weber 1978 vol.1 p.241]

[Frank Pearce pp 30-31: Weber's methodological individualism meant that he
felt the choice was between those occasions when charisma is a real
attribute..., and those when it is merely a fantasy of the leaders
followers. Durkheim on the other hand was quite clear that charisma is a
real phenomena and a social relation.

The term 'class status' will be applied to the typical probability of a
given state of (a) provision with goods, (b) external conditions of life,
and (c) subjective satisfaction or frustration will be possessed by an
individual or a group. These probabilities define class status in so far as
they are dependent on the kind and extent of control or lack of it which
the individual has over goods or services and existing possibilities of
their exploitation for the attainment of income or receipts within a given
economic order.

A "class" is any group of persons occupying the same class status. The
following types of classes may be distinguished: (a) A class is a "property
class" when class status for its members is primarily determined by the
differentiation of property holdings; (b) a class is an 'acquisition class'
when the class situation for its members is primarily determined by their
opportunity for the exploitation of service on the market; (c) the 'social
class' structure is composed of the plurality of class statuses between
which an interchange of individuals on a personal basis or
in the course of generations is readily possible and typically observable.
On the basis of any of the three types of class status, associative
relationships between those sharing the same class interests, namely,
corporate class organizations may develop. This need not, however,
necessarily happen. The concepts of class and class status as such
designate only the fact of identity or similarity in the typical situation
in which a given individual and many others find their interests defined.
In principle control over different combinations of consumers goods, means
of production, investments, capital funds or marketable abilities
constitute class statuses which are different with each variation and
combination. Only persons who are completely unskilled, without property
and dependent on employment without regular occupation, are in a strictly
identical class status. Transitions from one class status to another vary
greatly in fluidity and in the ease with which an individual can enter the
class. Hence the unity of "social" classes is highly relative and variable.

The primary significance of a positively privileged property class lies
in the following facts: (i) Its members may be able to monopolize the
purchase of high-priced consumers goods, (ii) They may control the
opportunities of pursuing a systematic monopoly policy in the sale of
economic goods. (iii)They may monopolize opportunities for the accumulation
of property through unconsumed surpluses, (iv) They may monopolize
opportunities to accumulate capital by saving, hence, the possibility of
investing property in loans and the related possibility of control over
executive positions in business, (v) They may monopolize the privileges of
socially advantageous kinds of education so far as these involve
expenditures.

Positively privileged property classes typically live from property
income. This may be derived from property rights in human beings, as with
slaveowners, in land, in mining property, in fixed equipment such as plant
and apparatus, in ships, and as creditors in loan relationships. Loans may
consist of domestic animals, grain, or money. Finally they may live on
income from securities.

Class interests which are negatively privileged with respect to property
belong typically to one of the following types: (a) They are themselves
objects of ownership, that is they are unfree. (b) They are "outcasts" that
is "proletarians" in the sense meant in Antiquity, (c) They are debtor
classes and, (d) the "poor."

In between stand the "middle" classes. This term includes groups who have
all sorts of property, or of marketable abilities through training, who are
in a position to draw their support from these sources. Some of them may be
"acquisition" classes.

Entrepreneurs arc in this category by virtue of essentially positive
privileges; proletarians, by virtue of negative privileges. But many types
such as peasants, craftsmen, and officials do not fall in this category.
The differentiation of classes on the basis of property alone is not
"dynamic," that is, it does not necessarily result in class struggles or
class revolutions. It is not uncommon for very strongly privileged property
classes such as slaveowners, to exist side by side with such far less
privileged groups as peasants or even outcasts without any class struggle.
There may even be ties of solidarity between privileged property classes
and unfree elements. However, such conflicts as that between creditors and
debtors, the latter often being a question of urban patricians as opposed
to either rural peasants or urban craftsmen, may lead to revolutionary
conflict. Even this, however, need not necessarily aim at radical changes
in economic organization. It may, on the contrary, be concerned in the
first in- stance only with a redistribution of wealth. These may be called
"property revolutions."

A classic example of the lack of class antagonism has been the relation of
the "poor white trash," originally those not owning slaves, to the planters
in the Southern States of the United States. The "poor whites" have often
been much more hostile to the Negro than the planters who have frequently
had a large element of patriarchal sentiment. The conflict of outcast
against the property classes, of creditors and debtors, and of landowners
and outcasts are best illustrated in the history of Antiquity.

The primary significance of a positively privileged acquisition class is to
be found in two directions. On the one hand it is generally possible to go
far toward attaining a monopoly of the management of productive enterprises
in favour of the members of the class and their business interests. On the
other hand, such a class tends to insure the security of its economic
position by exercising influence on the economic policy of political bodies
and other groups.

The members of positively privileged acquisition classes are typically
entrepreneurs. The following are the most important types: merchants,
shipowners, industrial and agricultural entrepreneurs, bankers and
financiers. Under certain circumstances two other types are also members of
such classes, namely, members of the "liberal" professions with a
privileged position by virtue of their abilities or training, and workers
with special skills command- ing a monopolistic position, regardless of how
far they are hereditary or the result of training.

Acquisition classes in a negatively privileged situation are workers of the
various principal types. They may be roughly classified as skilled, semi-
skilled and unskilled.

In this connexion as well as the above, independent peasants and craftsmen
are to be treated as belonging to the "middle classes." This category often
includes in addition officials, whether they are in public or private
employment, the liberal professions, and workers with exceptional
monopolistic assets or positions.

Examples of "social classes" are (a) the "working" class as a whole. It
approaches this type the more completely mechanized the productive process
becomes, (b) The "lower middle" classes. (c) The "intelligentsia"
without independent property and the persons whose social position is
primarily dependent on technical training such as engineers, commercial and
other officials, and civil servants. These groups may differ greatly among
themselves, in particular according to costs of training, (d) The classes
occupying a privileged position through property and education.

The unfinished concluding section of Karl Marx's Kapital was evidently
intended to deal with the problem of the class unity of the proletariat,
which he held existed in spite of the high degree of qualitative
differentiation. A decisive factor is the increase in the importance of
semi-skilled workers who have been trained in a relatively short time
directly on the machines themselves, at the expense of the older type of
"skilled" labour and also of unskilled. However, even this type of skill
may often have a monopolistic aspect. Weavers are said to attain the
highest level of productivity only after five years' experience.

At an earlier period every worker could be said to have been primarily
interested in becoming an independent small bourgeois, but the possibility
of realizing this goal is becoming progressively smaller. From one
generation to another the most readily available path to advancement both
for skilled and semi-skilled workers is into the class of technically
trained individuals. In the most highly privileged classes, at least over
the period of more than one generation, it is coming more and more to be
true that money is overwhelmingly decisive. Through the banks and corporate
enterprises members of the lower middle class and the salaried groups have
certain opportunities to rise into the privileged class.

Organized activity of class groups is favoured by the following
circumstances: (;i) the possibility of concentrating on opponents where the
immediate conflict of interests is vital. Thus workers organize against
management and not against security holders who are the ones who really
draw income without working. Similarly peasants are not apt to organize
against landlords, (b) The existence of a class status which is typically
similar for large masses of people, (e) The technical possibility of being
easily brought together. This is particularly true where large numbers work
together in a small area, as in the modern factory, (d) Leadership directed
to readily understandable goals. Such goals are very generally imposed or
at least are interpreted by persons, such as intelligentsia, who do not
belong to the class in question.

"The term 'social status' will be applied to a typically effective claim to
positive or negative privilege with respect to social prestige so far as it
rests on one or more of the following bases: (a) mode of living, (b) a
formal process of education which may consist in empirical or rational
training and the acquisition of the corresponding modes of life, or (c) on
the prestige of birth or of an occupation.

The primary practical manifestations of status with respect to social
stratification are conubium, commensality. and often monopolistic
appropriation of privileged economic opportunities and also prohibition of
certain modes of acquisition. Finally, there are conventions or traditions
of other types attached to a social status.

It is the peculiarity of the modern entrepreneur that he conducts himself
as the 'first official' of his enterprise, in the very same way in which
the ruler of a specifically modern bureaucratic state spoke of himself as
'the first servant' of the state.

The idea that the bureau activities of
the state are intrinsically different in character from the management of
private economic offices is a continental European notion and, by way of
contrast, is totally foreign to the American way.